Ex Darksiders 2 Senior UI Designer, Xander Davis, has spoken to Not Enough Shaders about working with THQ on Darksiders 2, and what he thinks of Nintendo’s forthcoming console Wii U. Here’s Davis’ unedited thoughts about the system.
(Wii U)

"From what I’m hearing from people who have actually played a Wii U as recently as a month ago, the games pretty much suck and the tablet is pretty much a complete gimmick." - ex -dev

Well fans are quick to cite quotes from darksiders 2 devs to prove the Wii u is powerful so I guess the word from an ex-dev is good enough. I can't wait til the spin doctors who aren't devs to discredit what this matey said. E3 and gamescom are telling about Nintendo and Wii u. There still aren't any info on the price and release date on Wii u.

Some say the Wii u good, others say its bad. I really do not know who his people are because from what I'm hearings the WII U is pretty good. In all honesty we really wont know until we got more confirmed info. Or you or I can actually play it.

Read the article.He's never even worked on the Wii U.Everything this blabbermouth said was pure speculation from a bitter ex UI designer.It's quite obvious that he hates the concept of the Wii U (He can't rap his little mind around it) and probably any concept or innovation ninty has to offer.He just gave his 2 cents,which once again I'll reiterate,means absolutely nothing because he's (by his own admission) never touched the damn thing.

From the rumored specs. this dev is exactly right. The CPU and the GPU are very similar, albeit, more powerful versions of those in the Xbox 360.

My question is, is there anything wrong with that?

IMO no, and honestly it's what I expected out of Nintendo's next console. I'm excited for the potential of the Wii-U, but Nintendo has failed to prove anything to me, beside Zombe-U. I need to see more / better 3rd party support, a better launch line-up, more trailers / demos of 1st party games, and what the future holds for the Wii-U.

Who knows if this guy is right or wrong? F**king Nintendo wont release the specs.One side you have a guy that hasnt touched the Wii U being critical of it. On the other hand you have devs that have their hands on a Wii U talking it up. Which one do you believe? One is talking out of his ass, and the other has it in their best financial interest to not slam the Wii U.

Its past time for Nintendo to step up and start getting people excited about the Wii U. They havent released the specs for whatever reason. And Wii U software videos are almost non-existant. Give us some Wii U Mario and Zelda footage to get us excited already.

How many different developers have said the same thing that wii u is as powerful as current consoles but no be wants to hear it. Look I didnt expect Nintendo to make a powerful system I am just happy it's a HD console and I get to lay Zelda in HD.

And they have a regular controller which is just like a xbox360 controller.

Ont thing I don't get why are the 2 analog sticks on top and buttons on bottom right on the controller? Wouldn't that be hard to control the camera and try to press buttons?

What if both MS and Sony drop the price on day of wii u launch a full $100? Families would much rather get s3 or xbox360 which has more games than a $400 machine. Nintendo fanboys will buy it since they buy everything Nintendo just like ms and Sony fanboys.

Nintendo have yet to announce a price or a release date and we abut to hit September what are they waiting for?

I played the Wii-U at E3. I was totally underwhelmed. Most people there were actually. As a matter of fact Batman: AC and AC3 looked WORSE on Wii-U than on the PS3 or 360. The controller was uncomfortable after about 20 minutes. All in all most people were disappointed with it. Just because devs are paid to say nice things about Wii-U compared to people who have worked on it and have gone on record saying its not that impressive.

Who has more to lose? I trust the person who has nothing to lose than the developer who has everything to lose. That and I actually played the darn thing, so...

Nintendo needs to just say F it & release those specs so people can STFU & stop speculating already. This developer has never even worked on a Wii U console, & it just doesn't like the idea of the Wii U. But he doesn't know crap without any hands on experience. He sounds like a freaking fanboy.

idk i mean if the specs are similar and the wii u is doing something the 360 and ps3 can alread do today with say smartglass on your phone then he may have some truth to what hes saying but should he say such things like this NOPE! caue hes going to gethimself in trouble. It all depends on wat nitendo does and hw innovative they are with the wiiu.

Announcement wise yes, but we don't know how long each company has been working on their product.

Wii u uses a tablet as part of their gaming where tablets are now old news as well as the tech in the console is said to be on par as a 360 which is 8+ year old tech so not much complex designing there.

However smart glass is just a program. How hard or long does it take to write some code?

Both the wii u and smart glass aren't exactly treading new ground complexity wise. So it's hard to say what was in developement longer.

Did you see the Vit/ps3 LBP2 gamescom play through? It was like Sony wiped out a smelly 18 incher and shoved the whole mess up Nintendo's bum. If the wii U cost that much the ps3/vita combo will make the Wii U irrelevant day 1. All ps3 buyers have to do is grab a vita. While many people who don't own sited may get both. I mean for $100 more you get a controller you can play games on anywhere. Have to leave the Wii U tablet at home....

"From what I’m hearing from people who have actually played a Wii U as recently as a month ago, the games pretty much suck and the tablet is pretty much a complete gimmick." - ex -dev

He admits he never played it. "From what I am hearing" being a big clue. Had he actually touched it would be "From my experience"

Sad part is people wont care that he has never touched it because he is saying what the haters want to hear. Flip it around and this article would be empty if it said Wii u made last gen console look bad

@Incipio your right, but the crysis games looked great to me on the current consoles. i like nice graphics and all but by no means am i a graphics whore. i started out on the nes/snes and had a blast as a kid, so for me to say oh i cant play this game because its not pretty enough would make me some type of spoiled, hypocritical gamer. which ill never be, ultimately its gameplay > graphics. if the graphics are twice as good as the current consoles on the wii u, i wont have a problem playing it at all. anyway most of us wont be getting one for 3rd party games. its about the exclusives, which nintendo always has a quantity of. so im fine with "good enough graphics" as long as great gameplay is there.

Except in the case of a game console, the Wii being the perfect example, hardware and software are two halves of the same whole. And while Wii sold well, at the beginning at least, most games for it didn't.

You may indeed call the Wii a success, but the arguable fact remains that Nintendo abandoned it almost before the WiiU was announced. 3rd party devs well before then.

The WiiU might sell solely on Nintendo's name, but it does not speak well of the system that one of its premiere titles will be years old at its release.

Ultimately what makes a console a success or failure is how many units they sell of said console. That is not up for debate and whether you love or hate the Wii it sold an incredible amount of units. Whether you love or hate the Kinect it sold an incredible amount of units.

Success is not up for debate, it either is or isn't. In this case, the Wii is a successful console. Whether the WiiU will be is yet to be seen. And considering this guy hasn't even worked on the console, his opinion isn't even slightly valid.

"I can only speculate, but as a UI Designer applying experienced critical thinking to game mechanics UI and the Wii U tablet, none of it makes sense to me to truly add value to gamers, even if you try."

Yeah cause screw games that could benefit from a "pointer" like mouse interface. Screw everything about it.

I swear, if EA doesn't release a C&C pack including the original, redalert 2 etc. Then their bloody idiots.

Also this guy just sounds like he is out of his zone. He just doesn't know what to do with it other than making touchable buttons. DS was awesome because of its touchscreen. I don't see how it won't enhance the experience.

How about the other games? I've read a lot of things online about all the games not running. I still have all my older C&C discs but never tried them but I was thinking of getting the first decade but I heard of numerous problems and most of the games not working on newer machines.

There's actually a fan made patch that restores lost music and movies that were missing from the original release, mainly affecting the original C&C and Red Alert. It also includes tweaks that let all the games run on Vista and 7. I can play all of them on my 64bit Windows 7. I'm pretty sure the Vista/7 compatability was in the last official patch for the game too that came out before the fan one.

The fan patch is really good tho, works a charm and adds music/movies and some multiplayer maps that were officially released but missing from the First Decade release. Has all the fixes from the 3 official patches too. Well worth a google :)

He hasn't even worked on the Wii U! “I’ve not worked on any Wii U version of anything (luckily). But, y’know, I very early on raised my major concern about this. Anybody buying any Wii U game that’s a port is probably buying it almost exclusively and specifically for how it can play differently through the Wii U’s alleged innovated UI."

This guy sounds bitter, and who says fanboys cant exist in the game world outside of forums? The way the guy is ranting, it sounds like Nintendo pissed in his Cheerio's.

They're insane if they release it at that price. Too expensive in today's economy for a number of gamers to buy it that is positive, and there is still as of yet, no 'MUST HAVE' (in the minds of millions of gamers) game on the console that can't be had elsewhere. They release it at $400, they'll be making the 3DS mistake all over again.

A new Nintendo console offering at $400 that performs graphically AS WELL AS the Xbox 360 and PS3 over 6 years ago is a desperately sad new low for Nintendo. I remember supporting them from the original Game Boy even deep into N64 back when I was in High School, but the very thought of FINALLY selling a HD console is a day late and a dollar short. They are WAY behind the competition. The tablet is just another gimmick.

How come every time someone questions the power of WiiU, somebody talks about the ps2 being underpowered compared to Xbox or gamecube? You shouldn't pretend that there was a large gap between the 3. It was marginal at best. The ps2 played DVDs as well which pushed it to dominate. The ps2 is the greatest system of all time for a reason and it's not because it was weak compared to the others. This is not a Wii/ps3 comparison.

One guy being unprofessional does not equate to the whole industry being unprofessional.

You want to know what I think is unprofessional? Requiring everyone to say only good things about a product or nothing because you are either putting out software on it and you don't want the device to be seen in a poor light or you might release one in the future and you don't want a history of having said bad things about it.

People go off like this because they are just like everyone else. But, more importantly, the people we want to hear the truth from can never do it because they are prevented by NDAs and job agreements that would get their butt's canned in a second.

I think you missed the part where he has no experience with the Wii U at all. I think most people here that don't agree with him are doing so not because he is being negative but because he is doing so with nothing to base it off of.

I didn't miss anything. I was replying to your hyperbolic statement of "proof there is a serious lack of professionalism in the gaming industry".

As I said, one guy being unprofessional does not equate to the whole industry being unprofessional or there being a lack of professionalism in the industry.

My follow up statement actually points out that most devs are professional because they never speak their own minds at all. How often have we heard of Joe Schmo coming out and spilling his guts about how he really feels about a game he made? Rarely. Because they are professionals who understand doing as such will get them fired.

Sony say stuff about Nintendo, Nintendo say stuff about MS, MS say stuff too....that's 3 major players in an 'Industry' where it's been well document that they all dish dirt when they want to....

Sometimes in an unprofessional way...same with EA, Activision and analysts like Pachter says dumb unprofessional stuff...Peter Molyneux bad mouthed MS when he left.....so whilst I agree not all are unprofessional...many are.

We do like to pick other peoples words apart...don't we cgoodno? ....challenging behavior is rife on this site....peeps love to pick holes in & object to anything & everything.

That developer kinda messed up....Its like bad mouthing your old job during an interview for a new job....nobody wants to hire people like that.....pretty dumb

It's hard to feel sorry for the guy after reading this. Everything he said was just pure speculation; he has no experience with the Wii U whatsoever, giving no credibility to his argument.

His lack of knowledge for the Wii U; taking the word from some people rather than experiencing the demos himself; the lack of professionalism in general (especially in those last several sentences)... I can see why he was fired.

Well I just put my second €20 deposit for the Wii U in Gamestop today (I live in Europe) and on my receipt it says that the Wii U is €350 in total. I dont know if this is the confirmed price, but €350 is pretty close to $400 if you do a currency conversion

what's an xbox360? but a microsoft learning lesson from nintendo and the wii....nintendo has it right..that's why there are so much hatred and nonsense.....wiiu will put microsoft and sony on the backburner and alot of people with investments can't take that.

To appease who? If that's what he believes, that's what he believes. He needs no qualifiers. If you want to discount his opinion, so be it. It sounds like people would have done so even if he had used it.

I value his opinion as a developer because developers thinking like him and wanting to stay away have just as valuable an opinion as developers that want to get involved. I want to hear both sides of the story.

If that's what he believes and the info he has gathered from his friends in the industry, so be it. It's his OPINION. Is your world over because of it?

Well, since he said he hasn't been around one or even worked with it, I'm not going to take his word.

You can take mine though. The wiiu will be better than the PS789 and the Xbox 129600. It is amazing. Granted, I haven't worked with the Wiiu, developed for it, or even been to a con to even see it, but I just know.

sounds like third partys are going to skip nintendo next gen to but i guess it doesn't matter ppl buy nintendo for nintendo games which im sorry to say haven't been very good except metroid corruption.smg.mariokart not even zelda has been good i will say this nintendo makes strong lasting consoles almost unbreakable more i can say for 360 and ps3 which i replaced

all i can do is laugh.. Just have to wait and see but i tell u one thing, if wii u is over $300, i wont be owning one.. I refuse to pay that much for something i already have.. The damn tablet only lasts 3-5 hrs so ill be charging the damn thing A LOT which means ill be tethered.. But if the wii u runs current gen games btr than the competition & is between $250-300, i dont mind picking one up.. Oh & gotta buy a 50-100 external HDD too so it adds up after a while